What is the Youth Vote?

The youth vote is defined as those within the 18-24 age group who have low voting turnout. Voting is a fundamental part of election success and the youth vote cohort makes up a significant portion of the electorate. Onboarding these young voters to support you can be the difference between winning an election race, or not.

Why is the Youth Vote Important?

Many policies directly affect the youth vote demographic, making their engagement important. Using the youth voters' understanding and position on issues affecting the community can help shape political messaging, increase voter turnout, help construct policies and increase supporter engagement.

The youth vote demographic is more socially conscious than other, are more outspoken about movements, and community issues and are more likely to participate in political advocacy groups.

Recommended Tips to Secure the Youth Vote

Getting the youth vote can be no easy task. However, we have some tips that may just help your campaign:

‍Social Media

A large portion of the 18-24-year-old youth vote demographic resides online. Through social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, you can share your policies and messaging in a manner that this age group can relate to and understand. You could use a specific hashtag in your political social media strategy and mobilize youth voters to raise awareness through this. Use this hashtag across social media and incorporate it into some of your political messaging.

Digital community outreach is growing in popularity and success. Being seen as modern and relatable is one of the core reasons to capture voters in this age group, and nurture their alliance with you or your party throughout your political career.

Youth Vote Resources on Your Website

Include information and political messaging that is specifically tailored to the youth that you are targeting, on your political website. Have a digital space on your website where you specifically speak to youth voters, making it easy for them to access content that is aimed at earning their support and ultimately their vote.

Recruit Volunteers

Recruit volunteers to help canvass, support you on election day, provide administrative assistance, help at a polling station, or be an online ambassador for your political campaign. This can help relational organizing methods, as those in this category are more likely to ask their friend, family member or their online communities to vote for a cause that they are active in.

This strives to give an understanding of the evolving world of politics to those in the youth vote category or younger, see how they can impact their community in the future, or simply shed some light on current affairs.‍

Youth Vote Canvassing Scripts

Having a specifically targeted canvassing script and set of data points for the youth vote demographic can help your door-to-door canvassing team specifically target this age group.

This canvassing script is a blueprint for your canvassing team and helps gather specific data which will help your get-out-the-vote (GOTV) strategy for this age group, and help your targeting post- canvass or outreach.

The first step in developing a canvass script for the youth voter group is to think about what you require from the canvass. What pieces of data do you need your canvassing team to gather and what questions do you need to ask to get this information? Here are some suggested questions for the youth vote demographic:

1. Do they intend to vote in the upcoming election

2. Have they heard of your candidate before?

3. Does the person support your candidate?

4. Capture contact details and consent if required

5. What is their #1 issue in this election?

6. Have they got a plan to get to the polls on election day?

Ecanvasser allows users to specify conversational points for canvassers during door to door canvassing and during phone banking activities. This data is easily ollected and can be viewed in one centralized dashboard, allowing campaign managers to make strategic political campaign decisions an data driven strategies.

Team up with Youth Leaders

Teaming up with youth groups and youth leaders that are aligned with your party and your goals is a great tip to secure the youth vote. What are the main obstacles preventing this demographic from voting? Is it a lack of awareness about political elections, or a lack of access to polling stations?

Understanding these issues can help shape your political campaign strategy and increase the youth vote. ‍

Host Virtual Events

Get those in the youth vote cohort to participate in online events surrounding your political candidacy. Capture them where they are most active and appeal to their interest groups through political messaging.

Host these events in conjunction with college societies and committees that actively showcase an interest in your party, community issues, or politics as a whole.

With the Ecanvasser software, you can invite your team to any organization event through the Ecanvasser dashboard. Send invite notifications to Ecanvasser's mobile apps and your team can confirm attendance. Over time this data will be incredibly valuable to your team manager. From a volunteer or a member's point of view, you become that bit more involved in your organization and feel more connected. Events help track members through the ladder of engagement into becoming team leaders.‍

Enhanced Targeting

As we live in an increasingly digital age enhancing your digital outreach or post-door-to-door canvassing outreach, with refined targeting methods is hugely important. There are a host of political campaign tools that your team can use to reach these youth voters. We live in a fast-paced age, the youth vote demographic may require reminding about upcoming elections, voting dates etc. using political emailing is a great way of sending reminders to these 18-24-year-olds.

Using political advertising and targeting this demographic with Facebook and Instagram Ads, and ultimately using the data collected to communicate your campaign message with the youth vote demographic will help increase the turnout on election day.